


If Any Man Can Hear, Hear He

by Necroplantser



Series: Scion of the Sixth House [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Dreams and Nightmares, Family Drama, Gen, House Dagoth (Elder Scrolls), Minor Violence, Name Changes, Patricide, Soul Sickness, ah at least he's not stacking chairs... yet, name changes but in a ritualistic weirdly religious way, quite literally getting away with murder, this is alcohol abuse and I will not stand for it, what's the difference between a Dreamer and a Sleeper anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25505050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necroplantser/pseuds/Necroplantser
Summary: The son of a Redoran noble has been having strange dreams lately. Unfortunately, he thinks they mean something.
Series: Scion of the Sixth House [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2121333
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	If Any Man Can Hear, Hear He

Suris Andrano had two things on his mind: that bottle of centuries-aged greef on the mantle, and his imminent death. If his father called the guard now, it would all be over -- and with incriminating pages torn from the family record-book crumpled in his satchel muffling the jangle of stolen drakes and jewelry, he was doomed. Staring down Dreyns in the parlor, neither dared to move. A stalemate that neither would break with words or actions, only Dreyns’ disappointed, withering look, and Suris’ furtive glances towards the front door.

“We don’t have to do this,” Dreyns finally said after an age of silence, palms out. In supplication, perhaps -- or, Suris concluded, a potential threat. His father was no mage, but what else was this family hiding? “You just empty that bag, now, and we can forget about this.”

Suris laughed. “Forget?” His voice came out an anxious nasally wheeze. “That’s what we’re doing now, forgetting. I wonder: do you have dreams too?” Already he was planning his means of escape; several, in fact, listing them out in his head by order of how likely they would be to succeed -- and then, alphabetically. Before his father could rebuke him, he started off again. “No, of course you don’t. I know mother does!”

He watched as Dreyns’ face sunk further, which he hadn’t thought physically possible until now. “How do you know that?” he asked, quiet, with none of the anger that Suris had expected to result from his actions. “How could you possibly…”

“I read,” said Suris, plain. “She would, my grandparents would… and mother came into my room last week.” He cracked his knuckles. “Told me not to forsake my family like she had.”

“Suris--”

“We can’t ignore it anymore!” Suris threw his hands up. “Go and ask her about the dreams she’s having. I’m sure she won’t leave you, but I don’t have a choice.” Lowering his arms, he glared at his approaching father. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t come near me. If I had any sense I would take mother with me regardless. Change is coming, father, and you’ll be there to see it!”

“Suris, if you don’t calm down, I’ll have no choice but to call the guard and have them take you to Temple. If they find out you’re having dreams, or worse, that you seem to think they mean anything--!”

“They’ll lock me up! I am well aware! Which is why--” Suris made a quick, calculated move for the mantle. Dreyns intercepted him bodily, grabbing him around the skinny waist and hauling him down to the floor where he flailed like a scarab on its back. Suris’ knee came up and made sickening contact with Dreyns’ nose the moment he let go, sending his father reeling, hand on his face, blood pouring between his fingers. Suris scrambled to his feet, grabbing the cask of greef from the mantle and lifting it over his head like an offering…

...before bringing it down on Dreyns’ head, letting go only as it shattered, and jagged bits of clay soaked in stinging alcohol bloodied his hands.

Suris didn’t stop to see if his father still had a pulse before he gathered what was left of his wits at the moment and ran for the door. Skaar wasn’t too hard to navigate, not for someone who’d grown up inside it, and after today, Suris reckoned, this little branch of the Andrano family would have no place there. He felt a short pang of guilt over leaving his mother potentially homeless, but retained his composure enough to cup his hands enough to hide the blood and walk casually over the bridges, attracting the perfect amount of attention -- none.

In the ashlands outside Ald’ruhn -- or more specifically, sat under the sleeping silt strider -- Suris set his bag down and threaded his fingers through the dust. He let them move as they would, forming lines and patterns as his subconscious mind willed it. Circles and lines, circles and lines. In daedric lettering in the ash, a string of three letters, the first half of his name where his fingers had stopped.

Sur slung his satchel over his shoulder and, leaving the work he had done, pulled his scarf up over his face and made his way upward, to the silt strider itself. “Maar Gan,” he said, digging through the bag for his money and then getting comfortable.

In the silt strider's hollowed carapace, Sur removed his mother's gold and ruby jewelry from the bag. He grit his teeth. He pushed the sharp end of a bar through the tip of one ear, successfully without crying out, capped it, repeat on the other ear. He bit his tongue. One chain-linked hoop through one lobe. The other through the next. The pain, he thought, and the trinkets passed down through his mother's family, brought him closer to his people. One should suffer for their love, he thought, and for the love of their family. He let the blood settle where it dripped down his neck.

His mother’s line, as he’d found in the documents currently stashed in his bag, had not been Redoran initially. Assimilated in the first era, Clan Drinith had been a high-ranking family of House Dagoth -- a name Sur had never dared to hear spoken aloud in his life. The blight-dreams had spoken to him, naming him and his kin to the Sixth House, bidding him come to the ruins of what had once been a great city to rejoin his people. Perhaps he would see his mother there. Perhaps not.

Sur Drinith set off for Maar Gan, with Kogoruhn and the Drinith tomb in his sights.


End file.
